


Event Horizon

by Sister of Silence (Orcbait)



Series: Perpetual Nonesense (the AU-niverse) [1]
Category: Event Horizon (1997), Warhammer 40.000
Genre: For Science!, Foreshadowing, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 14:00:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4609395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orcbait/pseuds/Sister%20of%20Silence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After years of hard work the scientific team is preparing for the Event Horizon's monumental jump. They have run every possible scenario, taken every possible precaution. Dr. Weir and his wife, who have headed the unprecedented project from the start, seem jumpy. Surely, it's merely the stress of their life's work completed on planet wide television?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Event Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> I was given the prompt quote: "I am 75% sure it hasn't gone to hell" for the Emperor of Mankind by a friend. As I had recently (re)watched Event Horizon, I couldn't resist the pun and went for it. The background to this is that in my corner of the WH40k fandom, Event Horizon is headcanoned as one of the first interactions between Mankind and the existence of the Warp. And, well, we agreed it was clearly Him who built the first gravity core needed for warp jumps!

They had been working on the gravity core for months now, the actual work, not the theoretical work. The theoretical work had taken over a decade and had been done by the professor and his wife alone. Mr and mrs Weir were famous doctors, visionaries in their fields of astrodynamics and astronautics respectively, and this was to be their crowning work.

Everyone was anxious, even the doctors, Michael realised. He had only been there for the last stage of their work, the actual building of the gravity core, working simultaneously on his PhD concerning the potential of what was popularly known as ‘Black Holes’. So very little was known about singularities, but if even a fraction of the theories about them could be proven true, their uses could be endless. The stars would finally be within reach!

Michael grinned excitedly despite himself as he joined the two doctors in front of the enormous plasma screen. It showed the command platform of the Event Horizon, as the ship had been called, it’s crew busy getting themselves and their ship ready for the monumental jump.

“As ready as we’ll ever be, doctors,” the captain remarked as he strapped himself down in his chair’s harnas.

Dr. Weir took her husband’s hand, squeezing it lightly. “Have a safe journey,” she replied as she glanced at her husband, who nodded barely perceptable.

Michael frowned. “Is something wrong?” he asked just below the volume needed for the transmitter to pick up his voice. He tried to keep his expression plain and cheerful.

Dr. Weir shook his head, his gaze moving from his wife to their PhD student. “No, we’re merely excited,” he replied, his tone soothing as he put his arm around his wife, who seemed far less convinced.

Michael nodded, pulling a smile on his face. Yet the feeling that something was terribly off would not let him go no matter how much he tried to shake it. Surely it was merely a result of his weariness, he’d been awake for two days straight helping the doctors with the last adjustments to the gravity core. It had been a privledge, but an exhausting one. They had calibrated and recalibrated the gravity rings around the well more times than he could remember.

Half an hour later the moment was finally there. The Event Horizon had arrived at Saturn and would soon make it’s jump to Proxima Centauri. Dr. Weir was pacing just outside the field of the astroscreen, conversing in latin with his wife who sat biting her nails on the edge of a table, watching him pass by in front of her.

Everyone was anxious. Michael tried to sit calmly himself but it was impossible. Any moment now, they would write history. Or forever be expunged from it. He glanced at the doctors, who were always so calm and collected even in the face of important test runs and drug trials. Seeing them so on edge now made him incredibly nervous as well. They had double - triple - checked everything, all would be well.

“Ready for our leap into the beyond, doctors,” the captain’s voice came over the astrolink, more distorted than before though that was to be expected now that they were near Saturn.

Both the doctors all but jumped out of their skin, turning as one and hastening to the astroscreen. It was a little creepy, even to Michael.

“Disengage the safety rings one by one,” Dr. Weir stressed, and the captain nodded.

“I have memorised the manual, doctor,” he replied in good cheer. “Let’s write some history!”

Dr. Weir nodded, though this time it was he who took his wife’s hand. She leaned towards him, taking hold of his arm with her free hand as if she were afraid he might be ripped away from her. Michael got up to stand near them, as did the other students who had assisted them.

“I am opening the broadcast to the rest of the world, now,” Dr. Weir said as she dialed in security clearance numbers. “Mind your words, Bill, the president and leaders from around the world will be watching you!”

The captain merely grinned, straightening in his seat. When Dr. Weird nodded at him, he pulled his face straight and serious. “Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, leaders and people of the united terran nations. I am Bill Langren, captain of the Event Horizon. Tonight we’ll make a step in spacefaring history that is as big as our first trip to the moon. We are travelling to our nearest star, something thought impossible less then five years ago, but here we are. I will not bore you with all the exact details,” he smiled a little, “as I am sure you have all read plenty about this in the last few months. Right now we are near Saturn, still in our proverbial intergalactic backyard. After our jump, when you turn off the tv to go to bed, look out of the window at the night sky and look for Alpha Centauri in the constellation of Centaurus - it’s the third brightest in the sky. Look at it tonight and know that we are there. We, fellow humans like yourself, are there.”

“Nearing jump point,” a woman in uniform at a panel closest to the captain remarked as she swiped her hand across the projection in front of her, adjusting the datafeeds.

“Crew take your seats,” the captain instructed through the ship wide commlink. Everywhere people hurried past to adjust and secure some last things before going to their seats and strapping in as instructed.

Dr. Weir had her arms around her husband’s waist as they watched the screen, all but clinging to him. There was a deep frown across his brow as he held her close in turn and again Michael could not shake the feeling there was something terribly, terribly wrong. Did they know something?

“Engaging gravity well, disabling safety rings in order,” the captain remarked, and looked up at the screen. “The stars, my friends. Look up at the sky and know we’ve reached th-.”

The link broke abruptly, going static. Within seconds a news reporter appeared, extolling the virtues of the succesful trip and launching into technical details about the destination of the Event Horizon.

Dr. Weir’s frown had deepened.

“Oh darn it,” his wife exclaimed and everyone froze. “I should have realised! It takes time for his words to travel to us - 2.73 seconds to be exact. What we hear he says ‘live’ is in fact from a moment before! And now I’ve ruined his speech.”

A smile breached through Dr. Weir’s frown as he watched his wife kick a trash can. “There are worse mistakes to make,” he replied soothingly, though he was clearly amused. The little tantrum had broken the anxious mood in the engineering lab.

“They haven’t reestablished contact yet,” one of the engineers replied as he typed furiously on the keyboard of his computer. “We cannot reach them.”

“It’s quite likely the gravity shift disturbed the fields of their sensorty equipment, there’s a reason we’ve had them practise recalibrating and send some of the best navigators we have with them,” Dr. Weir replied cheerfully as she took her husband’s hand once more. The student nodded, but kept typing furiously.

“I wouldn’t mind some tea,” Dr. Weir announced, giving his wife’s hand a gentle tug. “Come, lets have some tea. Our work is done.”

“That it is,” she replied with a smile, hooking her arm through his.

“It is taking a while, wasn’t our quickest test recalibration less than 5 minutes?” Michael said, frowning. The lack of a link disturbed him far more than he had thought it would.

“The circumstances are different, most importantly there is the stress of the fact that it is not a test run now and the time it takes for their astrolink signal to arrive here,” Dr. Weir remarked as he glanced at the still static screen. “I am 75% sure it hasn’t gone to hell.”

The way dr. Weir flinched at his words and glanced up at her husband did nothing to ease Michael’s nerves. They knew something.

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of time and hard work went into the creation and publication of this story and as such it is very dear to me. I would love to hear what you thought of it! If you decide to share my story, please credit and link back to me. Thank you!


End file.
